Relationship Variations
by Trinitas
Summary: Not all relationships can handle stress-testing. Several post-ep drabbles for "Known Unknowns."


**Relationship Variations**

**Cuddy:**

House is a challenge—sometimes relished, sometimes one she wishes were anyone's but hers. He's the spark in her day, the unknown she has to factor in: she doesn't know when, but she has to be there when he storms into her office to demand she authorize his latest crazy-but-probably-effective risk.

Maybe it could have been different before Rachel, but now…any man in her life has to be father material, has to be dependable, has to have something in his heart to give her daughter, too.

While Mayfield might have blunted some of House's glittering-sharp edges a little, she can't imagine he could understand that Rachel has to come first (hell, she's seen how he can't stand the idea of not being Wilson's number one priority twenty-four/seven). And she cringes to think of the kind of example House would set for a child.

Lucas is—she could generously say _quirky_—but he's also warm and funny and has no problem holding Rachel in his lap. Had no problem driving up on short notice to baby-sit, and even agreed to stay in the room and off House's radar with very little protest. Lucas can communicate and compromise; Lucas is reliable.

So she keeps House's firelight at the edges of her life, knowing better than to reach for the flames.

**House: **

Reading over the paper Wilson plans to present, it takes only seconds to figure out that he's playing kamikaze with his career: he wants to give what legally amounts to a confession of murder to a sizable chunk of the medical community. Even the doctors who aren't in attendance—word gets around. Everyone will hear about the idiot oncologist who said what nobody with a sense of self-preservation would say.

Wilson isn't supposed to be the self-destructive one, and House is _not_ supposed to be on-call to handle damage control.

Not that there'll be any controlling this kind of damage if Wilson gets his way. Clearly, what's called for here is preventative medicine.

He'd promised himself after the thing with the amphetamines that he wouldn't drug Wilson again, but this is an emergency, and Wilson after all had no problems drugging him by proxy via Cuddy last year, so he has no room to complain.

This many doctors, it's easy to get his hands on some sedatives, mash them to powder and lace a can of grape soda, which is sickly-sweet enough to hide the taste. Wilson passes out mid-lecture, and House lugs him to the bed.

Dead weight isn't easy to move, especially when you happen to be crippled.

"I hope you appreciate what I go through for you," he says to his unconscious friend, and peels off Wilson's pants: _that'll_ stall him if the meds wear off early.

**Chase:**

He wants so much to believe her when she says she'll support him. When she promises _I love you no matter what_. And it's clear after today, when anger at him compromised her medical judgment, that he's got to tell her something: if one more person dies because of what he did, he'll never—

Well. He doubts he's going to forgive himself regardless, but he'd rather not have another life on his conscience.

He could make up something, some explanation besides an affair that'd satisfy her. How many patients has he seen lie to save their marriages?

But he's also seen ugly truths come out despite those lies and break marriages, and if she has to know—better he tells her. Foreman just wants to stay out of the whole mess, but House might not stop at implication next time. Chase can practically hear him saying something like, _Cameron, have you talked to Chase yet about that dictator he killed? You didn't know? Oops. My bad._ Because that kind of meddling, throwing out the truth like a grenade is what House _does._

And telling her means he'll know whether or not she can forgive him; not have to wonder if she's only stayed because she doesn't know what he's done.

Finally he manages to get the confession out: "We didn't actually lose him. I killed him," and reads in the shock and horror on her face, in the hand she pulls out of his, that _no matter what_ is one more in a line of broken promises.

**END.**


End file.
